This Game Is Too Real-Chapter 789: Wild Punches Kill the Mad Old Man
Emerald-colored thick juice soaked the land that had been plowed by artillery, and the stench of decay was suffocating.
Dark green fungal hyphae were exposed on the surface of the soil, resembling blood vessels forcibly pulled from the body.
In the distance, the artillery continued to roar, and burning steel kept falling from the sky, like an endless rain.
One hundred twenty "Conqueror" tanks formed the spearhead of the attack, their thick gun barrels and red-hot coaxial machine guns continuously spitting flames, unleashing fierce firepower during the brief pauses of long-range artillery.
Tens of thousands of clone infantry, armed with Ripper Rifles, howled as they charged with the tracer bullets flying above, recklessly rushing toward the bombed mutant fungi, venting their boiling rage with primal screams.
"Ah ah ah!!!"
"Loo—!!"
A shrieking wail, also seemingly a roar of anger, emerged from a mutant fungus covered in heavy shrapnel wounds. Its plump body pulsated like an umbrella and continuously squeezed out clumps of dark green spore clouds.
The dark green spore clouds, like some sort of elixir, had the other nearby mutants groaning in pleasure. Staggering, they climbed from craters, and their fragmented limbs healed at a visibly rapid rate.
Especially the "Walking Corpses" and "Corpse Dogs"!
Although they were cannon fodder and not known for their offensive capabilities, they possessed an extremely stubborn resilience. Merely a whiff brought the twisted bodies back to life.
In an instant, the green cloud was sucked clean. The spore-releasing "Big Mushroom," however, seemed to have wilted and deflated.
Noticing the situation, the advancing clone squad immediately attacked, firing their rifles while maintaining the rhythm of their assault.
The Big Mushroom was hit several times and was on the brink of collapse.
However, just as the clone squad was about to reach it, the body of the Big Mushroom suddenly convulsed violently like boiling water, and then its body ripped open a nearly one-meter-wide fissure!
Dozens of tentacles rapidly shot out of the crack, lashing like whips at the clone soldiers facing them!
"Loo!"
One clone soldier took a direct hit. He let out a short, excited scream as he grasped the unfortunate "fly" like a hunting frog, pulling it into his mouth and pressing its head into the esophagus full of corrosive acid.
But before the Big Mushroom could truly savor the sweet flesh, a bayonet pierced through the back of its skull.
"Loo!!!"
A pain-filled howl erupted from its open mouth and wounds.
The creature, like one with a bad stomach, writhed its lower tentacles repeatedly, retreating backward and spitting out a mix of bloody flesh and digestive juices.
Before it could stabilize and assume a defensive stance, another clone soldier charged forward, his eyes glinting with a mad bloodlust bright as the bayonet in his hand!
"Ah ah ah!!!"
He yelled as he thrust the bayonet into the mutant’s body, savagely stirring it left and right.
The Big Mushroom, capable only of releasing healing spores, soon fell to the ground, alongside the Walking Corpses and Corpse Dogs being suppressed.
A Crawler rushed forward and bit through the neck of a clone soldier, but was quickly blasted to pieces by a tank shell coming head-on.
Close combat ensued between the two sides.
The clone soldiers, appearing even more like "Mutated slime fungus" than the oddly shaped mutants, found murder a vital essence of life!
Their lives were counted in seconds.
They had crossed thousands of kilometers of desert to this unfamiliar land, all for this final moment of blaze.
They fell continuously, yet no one retreated.
The murky flesh and dark mud blended together, painting the land red as they pushed the battle line forward, further and forward!
"Charge!"
Emerging halfway from a turret filled with blood and mucus, a Weilante Centurion roared, urging those under his command to press the attack.
"Let this filthy, ugly lot see what true cruelty is!"
"We will make them regret coming to this world! Offering victory to the Marshal! Bringing glory back to Triumph City! Delivering death to our enemies!"
"Charge!!"
Responding to his roar were deafening shouts of agreement.
"Ah ah ah!!!"
Though they couldn’t make out exactly what their leader was yelling, rushing to their death was indeed the best release for them.
Behind them, soldiers in heavy protective gear carried cylindrical metal canisters on their backs and held extermination nozzles, slowly advancing.
From time to time, some would stop, bend down, and pick up chunks of flesh mixed with mud and blood from the ground to toss into the containers behind.
The B-type bacteria strain could not grow outside of Baiyue Province, but the "offspring" produced by the lairs farmed by the Alliance had solved this problem.
Besides mass synthesis through hatcheries, the Alliance Biological Research Institute had also developed the "Portable Extermination Device" — which was what those soldiers from Weilante were carrying on their backs.
Each culture tank stored an "offspring" inoculated with the B-type bacteria genome, constantly synthesizing the B-type bacteria, consuming only one corpse per square kilometer.
The B-type bacteria, which eroded the soil, could not survive outside Baiyue Province by itself and would naturally disappear after accomplishing its mission to eradicate the J-type bacteria.
It could be said to be extremely useful.
The Allied forces had already reclaimed half of the territory of Haiya Province with this equipment.
The drone’s camera zoomed out slowly, following the rising smoke and spores, and dense shadows sprawled across the vast wilderness.
It wasn’t just one ten-thousand-troop contingent initiating the attack, but a full ten ten-thousand-troop contingents from the Eastern Legion!
Even more brutal slaughters and deaths were visible all over this mud-smeared land...
Not only the Alliance could see the decline of the Torch, the commanders of the Legion could see it too.
To get more chips when it came time to divvy up the spoils of war, they had to control more territories!
And, on the eastern side of the Legion’s frontline, the combat on the Alliance-controlled lines was even more intense.
If the Legion’s clone soldiers merely saw death as relief, the players of the Alliance truly embraced death as a return home.
Even though the people of Weilante did not care about the casualties of the clones, even wishing these "ants" would die faster so fresher and more robust cannon fodder could be sent from the rear, they dared not let the clones be heavily surrounded...After all, even the least death-fearing individuals could lose their fighting will and resist no longer.
However, the players did not have this problem.
For the sake of killing more creatures before they died, or to avoid hindering their allies, they would even voluntarily delve deep into enemy territory, intentionally getting surrounded by the Torch’s mutated organisms.
This deceptive tactic also caused the Torch much suffering in the early stages of the war.
When they attempted to annihilate the Alliance’s living forces through encirclement tactics, they ended up suffering heavier casualties.
Further east past the Alliance-controlled zone were the territories controlled by the Alpha Special Mobile Force of the Academy and the Torch Hound Special Forces.
Further distance was dominated by corporate-controlled battle lines.
Apart from the very first Mechanized Mountain Division No.100 sent to the frontline, there were also three infantry divisions and twelve mercenary groups that had traversed Yue Ma Province and rushed to the frontline to fight in this region.
Various forces showcased their prowess on the frontline, with only the Torch getting battered in exhaustive defense.
The ravaged land looked patchy in green and purple, resembling a bruised and swollen face that had been punched.
Looking down at the fragmented frontline, the Human Emperor stood in the void, eyes bulging, grating his teeth in frustration, no longer displaying the relaxed and unhurried demeanor from the beginning of the war.
There were too many enemies!
Soldiers armed with guns swarmed the frontline like locusts. He had just finished deploying on the eastern side when tens of thousands emerged in the west. After managing both sides, the Alliance then dropped a group of paratroopers right on his face. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺
The threat was not just coming from the front, his rear was also in flames.
Even with his sharp calculations, he couldn’t fend off this countless number of punches simultaneously targeting him.
"Die... all of you die!" the Human Emperor roared angrily, but no one could hear his cry.
He continually projected his consciousness onto the evolutionary bodies at the frontline, engaging in the fierce combat, attempting to turn the tide of defeat, but he soon lost contact with his mortal body, only able to continuously cycle between connecting and disconnecting.
Perhaps touched by his efforts, or perhaps out of pity for his futile struggle, a gentle voice came from above his head.
"Enough, you have tried your best."
Hearing the Holy Child’s voice, a brief pause of madness appeared on his face.
But it lasted only a moment.
"I can still fight..." he panted, his face still bearing the madness of the previous evolutionary body before death.
Watching that crazed look, the Holy Child sighed softly.
"The fall of Heaven is inevitable... Our time has come, the others have already set out, and so should you—"
"Never!"
The Human Emperor roared furiously, cutting off the airy remark.
He was like a beast cornered against a wall at that moment.
Staring down at the fiery battlefield below, he spoke sternly, word by word.
"I will not retreat! My Heaven is right here... I will go nowhere!"
To enable Heaven to descend on this land, to allow humanity to evolve into a higher existence, at least a million survivors had died by his hand!
After such tremendous sacrifice, his heaven had finally descended upon the mortal realm, and all the sacrifices finally paid off—nobody could take his heaven away!
He would fight to the end!
To ensure that all this blood was not shed in vain!
Silently observing the distorted face, the Saint Heir sighed gently.
"I respect your choice..."
As he spoke, his vacant eyes took on a hint of madness, resembling a black hole that devoured everything in the world, even space itself.
"...I will witness the final moments of this miracle with you."
...
Low swirling black smoke danced in the sky, outlining bullet scars in the broken clouds.
Standing inside the bridge of the Iron Heart, Chu Guang, like the "Human Emperor" drifting somewhere unknown, also overlooked the battlefield that had been plowed over and over by artillery fire.
However, his demeanor and emotions were noticeably calmer than the madmen of the Torch, with hardly any emotional fluctuation visible in his stern expression.
From the bridge’s floor-to-ceiling windows, one could faintly see the outline of the coastline.
If quick, it would take a week, and at most half a month, for the landing troops to meet up with the main forces on the northern front.
Then, it would be time to search for and destroy the facilities of the Torch Church.
The details of the local battle were not noteworthy; at that moment, Chu Guang was looking at the investigative report on Shelter No. 182 sent by Fang Chang through the holographic screen.
It was a refuge that had been abandoned for a century, which Torch had restarted and transformed into a research facility mainly engaging in projects related to Perfect Life forms.
Most of the research and production facilities held by the Torch Church were of this kind.
According to the investigative report provided by Fang Chang, besides finding some improved production machines and three Black Boxes on the fourth underground level of Shelter No. 182, they also discovered 120 cylindrical cultivation tanks used to soak experimental bodies, along with a giant glass vat filled with gene modification serum, covering an area of 100 square meters, on the fifth underground level.
In addition, there was a large cold storage facility storing thousands of corpses that had not yet been processed or were deemed valuable for research.
These corpses hung like meat in the cold storage, some with three arms or two heads, and almost none maintained a basic human form.
According to confessions from facility workers, Torch’s apostles selected from captured survivors those suitable candidates who exhibited no obvious rejection reactions to the gene modification serum, and then threw them into the gene modification serum-filled cultivation tanks to soak for 3 to 7 days, partially transforming some into Mutants.
Of course, even after discarding the unsuitable with rejection reactions, only a fraction ultimately completed the transformation.
After all, Mutants were part of an unfinished and unstable technology, posing inherent great risks from the technological principle itself.
Moreover, re-embryonizing fully developed adults, replacing their entire genome and forcing its expression was as difficult as stuffing a person back into the womb for rebirth.
This was much more challenging than a blood transfusion.
Even with the Torch Church’s certain advantages in biological technology, they could only achieve a 67% "good product rate."
And of that 67% "good product," more than half of the individuals, unable to endure the torturous transformation process, completely lost their sanity and degenerated into animal-like beings.
As for those who did not turn into animals, their minds also twisted to various extents. Schizophrenia was common; for instance, one body might house a crowd of people, or some might lose their memories or imagine themselves as chefs or similar identities.
Details of these studies were recorded in the experimental logs, every line dripping with blood.
Torch seemed to realize that these things were inconvenient to disclose publicly, so they planned to destroy the originals while backing up the data.
Fortunately, his little players arrived just in time and intercepted the Apostles who were about to evacuate.
After reading the entire report, Chu Guang sighed softly and said,
"...Just looking at the content of this investigative report, the crimes of these guys are innumerable."
Standing behind him, Heya, who had been silent for a long time, showed a face full of inexpressible guilt and lowered her head.
"Sorry..."
"You don’t need to apologize for mistakes you haven’t made," Chu Guang extended his index finger to draw lightly in the air, gathering the pale blue light at his fingertip and dispersing it, then turned to look at her and continued, "Moreover, your research has made a significant contribution to our cause and to humanity. You should feel proud, lift your head up."
Heya lifted her head, but her eyes, filled with complexity, still dodged a bit.
The people who committed these crimes were her former neighbors; they might even have shared the same table in the same cafeteria... and some of them could have been her teachers.
"But after all, they were residents of Shelter No.117..."
"It’s just a part, even if only one person made a different choice, that still counts as a different choice."
Chu Guang interrupted her, staring into her evasive eyes and continued,
Moreover, there are no shortage of residents from Shelter No. 117 within the Alliance Biological Research Institute; they are all good people, and you should be clear about this."
Those in blue jackets were saved by the Alliance from Shelter No. 401.
Although their numbers were not many, their contribution to the progress of Alliance biotechnology was significant, and the prosperity of the Alliance also owed much to them.
Heya’s eyes reddened slightly as she whispered a thank you.
"Thank you..."
"There’s no need to thank me, I should have said something similar," Chu Guang smiled and continued, "It’s not just me who thinks this way, including Crow who pulled you out of that sleep cabin, and other residents who helped you collect research materials... We all feel the same."
The Alliance did not engage in identity politics; this had always been the case. Moreover, not every resident of Shelter No.117 had joined the Torch, and there were those who had joined and then regretted it.
But that being said, there was one thing he had always been curious about.
Various pieces of intelligence indicated that the Torch pioneers totaled only thirteen members, including that Saint Heir named Wang Yi.
However, according to the intelligence gathered by the Guards Corps through investigations and visits, far more residents had fled from Shelter No.117 than that.
What about the others?
Including Heya’s master Karen... Where had those who had once joined the Torch and donned the Blue Jackets gone?
Actually, it wasn’t just him who was puzzled; Sun Shiqi, the former manager of Shelter No.70, had also harbored similar confusions.
Shelter No.70 and Shelter No.117 had been in regular contact over the past century, including exchanging research on "Mutated slime fungus"... after all, the former was right next to a huge lair, yet they were not experts in biology.
In Sun Shiqi’s memory, the residents of Shelter No.117 did not seem like the type of lunatics capable of such bizarre deeds, nor did they have the capacity to do so.
Most of the Blue Jackets lived miserably in the Wastelands; kinder Waste Land Wanderers ignored them, while harsher ones simply treated them as spoils.
Of course, this wasn’t to excuse any errors of Shelter No.117, but he always felt like there was an invisible hand behind it all... much like how the Alliance indirectly controlled the situation in Poluo Province through the Baiyue Corporation.
Although Chu Guang did not much like this fellow’s odd analogies, because the two matters were not the same at all, he had to admit that he too had felt something similar.
The trajectory of the Torch Church over the ten years, after leaving Brocade River for Haiya, had been somewhat outrageous.
The Iron Tower Organization, although a poor version of the Alliance, involved local survivors who voluntarily organized to establish a self-help alliance, which was not any more invincible than Giant Stone City Prison.
Yet, perplexingly, they who Giant Stone City could not subdue quickly disintegrated the Iron Tower and enslaved an entire province of survivors.
They possessed Black Boxes far exceeding the theoretical reserves of Shelter No.117, arming battalions with incredible equipment that even the elite warriors of the Alliance found formidable.
Chu Guang was not only curious about where the other residents of Shelter No.117, outside of the "Council of Thirteen", had gone but also, what exactly had happened in the years after Torch reached this land beneath their feet...
Just then, Lu Bei of the Guards Corps passed through the hatch and walked into the bridge, crisply saluting.
"Respected manager... sir, our operatives active at the front have received a signal from within the Heavenly Domain..."
Recently, this young man had finally corrected his way of addressing him as "sir", and Chu Guang was quite satisfied with his improvement.
The only slight dissatisfaction was that this young man often repeated what he had said, but rarely truly listened.
Seeing Lu Bei suddenly stop speaking, Heya promptly prepared to leave the bridge discreetly, but was stopped by Chu Guang.
"Stay here and listen."
Saying this, Chu Guang looked toward Lu Bei and continued.
"The Alliance is not yet at a point where we need to hide information like a ’doctor’ hides a diagnosis. I remember saying that all information about the Torch Church collected by the Guards Corps should be transparent to the Alliance Biological Research Institute, and need not be cleared with me first."
Lu Bei lowered his head.
"Yes, sir..."
Knowing the young man meant well, Chu Guang did not reprimand him much but merely indicated with his eyes for him to continue.
Lu Bei paused, then reported the intelligence in full.
In short, it was not just the Allied Forces who thought the Torch was done for, the insiders of the Torch felt the same way.
Although the Torch Church supposedly carried the word ’Church’, those doctrines were just to deceive ordinary people; the high ranks of the Torch spoke not so much of those doctrines but more of science and methods.
Among them, while there were staunch idealists, there certainly were opportunists and those of an ’it-doesn’t-concern-me’ philosophy.
For example, Eure, who was currently working for the Alliance, was a typical example of the latter; he himself wasn’t too clear on what he wanted, having been just a corporate drone in a pharmaceutical company before the war, suddenly thrown into the war, he had changed locations to do research, been confusedly coaxed by colleagues to take a nap, awakened to find himself in the Wasteland Era, and had thoughtlessly followed the Torch when beckoned.
Others saw the Torch’s resources and hoped to use them to continue their pre-war, unfinished research.
Anyway, inside the high ranks of the Torch was a researcher who, seeing that the Torch, this crazily destined-for-doom tree was about ninety percent likely to fall, hoped to surrender to the Sticky Community Allied Forces with intelligence and research materials in exchange for a generous deal.
Interestingly, according to this senior researcher’s explanation, the upper echelons of the Torch Church seemed to plan their escape using a secret device located within his facility.
Clearly, he was not included in that "strategic relocation", so he took the chance to leak the news.
"What’s the name of that researcher?!" Before Lu Bei could finish, Heya anxiously interrupted.
Lu Bei hesitated, glancing at Chu Guang, but seeing the manager remain unmoved, he finally sighed, resigned, and revealed,
"The name that person left for us to identify him by is Karen... I was also surprised at first, but I feel that person is not like the one you’ve been searching for."
